Recent Celebrations: Easter and the Royal Wedding

If I may back up a little bit...

Easter

Easter baskets were a little scanty this year because I forgot to order things online in time (and there were so many great-looking treats I wanted to get myself the kids). But I was okay with that because I feel like we've had quite a few celebrations lately - and I wanted to use these Peter Rabbit pails I'd bought once and put away; they were the perfect size for the amount of stuff I had. They each got a Where the Wild Things Are sticker scene set from the $1 bins at Target, a candy bar, a Lake Champlain dark chocolate square (*ambiguous sugar), Divine dark chocolate eggs (*ambiguous sugar), and some Surf Sweets gummy bears. (We also re-use green paper shreds for our Easter baskets.)

We paint wooden, ceramic, or paper mache eggs every year for Easter.

For breakfast, we had yogurt (sprinkled with flax) in egg cups,

fruit in the shape of a cross,

and Bitt of Raw's gluten-free Carrot Muffins with Cashew Cream Cheese.

my little sweeties, after church

(Sweetie #3 had a black eye.)

Royal Wedding Party

I became fanatically excited about the Royal Wedding. (Sorry to those who are terribly sick of the coverage. Don't read any further!) I think I watched every possible "secrets behind the royal family" and "how Will & Kate met" show possible. We planned a fun little event (just me and the kids) for Friday morning. We dressed up - my 10 year old would only don a knight's cape for a brief period...

but my 6 year old (who is surprisingly quite fond of fashion and dressing up) went all out.

And we girls were very serious about choosing our outfits and headwear.

(I'm wearing a formal from my sister's highschool days.)

The Spread

(on my daughter's little table set up in my bedroom)

How cute are they all? I don't really have an opinion about the monarchy in general (and it's not my tax money; sorry, Penny!), but I do love a good celebration. And they seem pretty nice and down to earth. I was obsessed with finding out what her dress would look like - it was perfect! And strangely, I cried. The kids asked me WHY I was crying and to please stop.

"It should have been ME!"

Scones

I was really proud of my scones (because I don't know if I've ever made them before and didn't know what they would be like). I can't point you in the direction of a recipe because I kind of combined two. I made part of them with fresh strawberries and used Just Cherries for the other half. I will make these again because they were a hit in this house.

English Muffins

The English Muffins were also a hit. I made them cinnamon toast style, using Food For Life Gluten-Free, Multi-Seed Muffins and toasting them in the oven with Earth Balance, cinnamon, and a little sugar.

I printed off the Royal Bunting to hang around part of the table. I found this at Make Merry!. Since the kids aren't big tea drinkers, we mixed in a little apple juice with the tea.

For some reason, I was absolutely enamored with my Will & Kate plates. I got the idea from a party planner on Regis & Kelly. :) I happened to have a pack of Chinet hard plastic plates, leftover from an event. All you have to do is print off a picture, cut it to size and put it between two plates. I told Ryan I loved my Will & Kate plates so much, it's going to be hard to go back to eating off regular plates.

I'm going to wash and save these plates and use this idea for future events. And try to hide it in future blogging photos that I may or may not still be eating off Will & Kate.

This was the perfect time to try out Bitt of Raw's Raw Vegan Cranberry Cheesecake. I topped it with the love birds' wedding topper from my wedding, hee hee. Her cheesecake looks a "bitt" different than mine (better, of course), but I was pleased.

I thought this was really, really good. I made it the day before and gave it plenty of time to chill. I loved the texture and consistency, and it is my favorite raw cheesecake I've made so far (as well as one of my favorite cheesecakes period). I also love how the cranberries give it such a strong color.

I was in a hurry while making it so I did not make the crust raw and homemade (but I will next time!). I just crumbled up an Arrowhead Mills Organic Graham Cracker Crust into the bottom of the pan. (This would have been better if I'd melted in a little oil or Earth Balance to make it stick together, but I was trying to watch my calories.)

We reconvened back to Party Central for lunch (and more royal wedding coverage!). This time, it was baby carrots, apple slices, Tofurky deli slices, avocado slices, and cucumber sandwiches.

My little Brits had to eat their sandwiches on wheat bread with crusts and not too terribly fancy. Since I'm trying to avoid soy protein isolate now as much as possible (which isn't 100% easy but getting easier), I made homemade cream cheese for the first time.

Pip, pip cheerio!